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Stephen James Cleeve is a much-travelled man, writes financial investigator Tony Hetherington. In the past year or so he has popped up in Kuwait, Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia and, of course, his home country, England.
And all these travels have been in the cause of selling slices of that same England to investors around the world, with a mixture of lies, half truths and deceit that has already earned him a ban on acting as a director of any British company this side of the year 2008. For the full story, read on …
Cleeve is the man behind a business called European Land Sales, which buys fields and then sells the land in house-sized plots. Investors are given the impression that getting the agricultural land re-zoned for housing development is a short-term formality which will take no more than a few years. And as soon as development consent is granted, the plots will soar in value by anything from 300 per cent to 1,000 per cent.
What they are not told is that, typically, local councils in England have already drawn up all their housing plans until the year 2016. If an investor’s plot is not in these plans, then buyers will be waiting at least a decade and quite possibly forever. And they are not told either that the land has already been subject to a huge price hike by Cleeve himself. Pressed on this exact point by visitors to a sales presentation held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kong Kong, the firm’s spokesman denied knowing what the land had cost before it was marked up in price.
Well, here are some details. In 2004, Cleeve paid £90,000 for a field near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. His firm now says it has sold all available plots, which means it has raked in well over £1 million. And eighteen months ago Cleeve bought a remote piece of land in rural Devon for £30,000. He is already well in profit on sales of plots at prices which now value the whole site at almost £1 million.
It’s not all been plain sailing for Cleeve though. In the 1990s he ran two scam companies in Britain. Napier Spirit sold casks of whisky, and Forrester & Lamego marketed Champagne and port, all as an investment, and with false forecasts of big profits. Both companies were investigated by consumer protection officials who won High Court orders to shut them down. Cleeve was banned for eight years from acting as a company director, a period which does not expire until February 2008, and which explains why European Land Sales is a trading name and not a limited company.
Cleeve has also hit trouble in Australia, where he opened a sales office in Melbourne. Consumer protection is taken very seriously in Australia, and in December 2005, the Supreme Court in Victoria banned Cleeve from using a promotional video which makes false claims that his firm has a 90 per cent success rate in winning consent for housing development on its land. In fact, its success rate is zero - it has never won planning consent for any of its sites.
Consumer protection bodies in both Victoria and Western Australia have issued public warnings against Cleeve and his firm. European Land Sales vanished in a hurry from the Perth Money Show on the first day, and Cleeve has cancelled a planned appearance at the 2006 Sydney Property Expo.
Of course, land can be a good investment but beware on how you buy it. Land Banking is becoming a widely distributed investment opportunity that, at present, is lightly regulated if at all. The potential returns can be very attractive and the opportunity for foreign investors to buy in the UK is a compelling proposition. Just make sure you are doing it for the right reasons with credible statistics to back up any claims made by Agents in this field.
Thanks to Expat Investor for this article.
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